TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

150 WODAN.
interpret
the words :
nam
ec upp runar, Ssem. 28 a .
J?oer ofreS, J?ser
ofreist, J?ser ofhugol Hroptr, i.e., them OSinn read out, cut out,
thought out, Seem. 195 b . Also Snorri, Yngl. cap. 7 : allar J?essar
idrottir kendi hann meS rdnum ok lid&um. Hincmar of Eheims
attributes to Mercury the invention of dice-playing : sicut isti qui
de denariis quasi jocari dicuntur, quod omnino diabolicum est, et,
sicut legimus, primum diabolus hoc per Mercurium prodidit, unde
et Mercurius inventor illius dicitur, 1, 656. Conf. Schol. to Odyss.
23, 198, and MS. 2, 124 b : der tiuvel schuof das wiirfelspil. Our
folk-tales know something about this, they always make the devil
play at cards, and entice others to play (see Suppl.). 1 When to this
we add, that the wishing-rod, i.e., Wish s staff, recals Mercury s
caducous, and the wish-wives, le.,oskmeyjar, valkyrior, the occupa
an echo of the
tion of the Psychopompos ; we may fairly recognise
Gallic 2 or Germanic Mercury in the epithet Trismegistos (Lactantius
i. 6, 3. vi. 25, 10. ter maximus Hermes in Ausonius), which later
poets, Romance and German, in the 12th and 13th centuries 3
transferred to a Saracen deity Termagant Tervagan, Tcrvigant,
Terviant. Moreover, when Hermes and Mercury are described as
dator bonorum, and the Slavs again call the same god Dobro-pan
that the
(p. 130, note), as if mercis dominus ; it is worth noticing,
Misnere Amgb. 42 a , in enumerating all the planets, singles out
Mercury to invoke in the words : ISTu hilf mir, daz mir saelde
wache! schin er mir ze geliicke, noch so kum ich wider uf der
sselden phat (pfad).
Just so I find Odin invoked in Swedish popu
lar songs : Hielp nu, Oden Asagrim ! Svenska fornsangor 1, 11.
hielp mig Othin ! 1, 69. To this god first and foremost the people
turned when in distress ; I suppose he is called Asagrim, because
among
1
the Ases he bore the name of Grimnir ?
Reusch, sagen des preuss. Samlands, no. 11. 29.
2 In the Old British mythology there appears a Gwydion ab Don, G. son of
Don, whom Davies (Celtic researches pp. 168, 174. Brit. myth. p. 118, 204, 263-4,
353, 429, 504, 541) identifies with Hermes he invented ; writing, practised
magic, and built the rainbow ; the milky way was named caer Gwydion, G. s
castle (Owen, sub v.). The British antiquaries say nothing of Woden, yet
Gwydion seems near of kin to the above Gwodan = Wodan. So the Irish
name for dies Mercurii, dia Geden, whether modelled on the Engl. Wednesday
or not, leads us to the form Goden, Gwoden (see Suppl.).
3 Even nursery-tales of the present time speak of a groszmachtige Mercurius,
Kinderm. no. 99. 2, 86.
4 This Termagan, Termagant occurs especially in 0. Engl. poems, and may
have to do with the Irish torinac augmentum, tormacaim augere.